Endgame
by Sparcck
Summary: A look into what happened to Quatre on the Zero System, exploring the darker half he thought he had managed to supress. This is a sort of fusion with Samuel Beckett's play of the same name. [surreal, dark, angst, shonen ai: 3x4]


Endgame, by Sparcck

Endgame  
by [Sparcck][1]

24 August 2001

Title: Endgame  
Author: Sparcck   
Posted: 24 August 2001  
Rating: PG-13  
Archive: Tyr at [GWA][2], Steel at [www.steelsong.com][3], anyone else just ask first!  
Warnings: Angst, shonen ai, surreal, dark, Fic of the Absurd  
Spoilers: Those eps in the 20's, _Endgame_ by Samuel Beckett  
Summary: When he loses his father in the war, Quatre slides down into madness, letting his other half gain control.

Disclaimer: Do I own them? Of course not. Will you sue me? I hope not. All characters, names, places, etc. belong to Bandai, Sunrise, and Sotsu Agency.

Also, I did not write _Endgame_. A great man named [Samuel Beckett][4] did, and it's one of the best things I've ever read.

Note: This is sort of an experimental fic, very surreal, playing with time and reality, that sort of thing. I tried to take another look at the Zero System, specifically Quatre on the Zero System. He was a very different person before he joined the Maguanacs, and I thought it would be interesting to see his other life, his other persona, festering below the surface of the angel that everyone paints him as.

This started out as a Nine Inch Nails songfic that had been bouncing around my head for months, but I started thinking about his other persona as not being crazy, really, just titled to the side, a little distorted. And what better text to go to for a little distorted than a Samuel Beckett play? Aerachnae was totally enthused about this, and encouraged me to go ahead and write it, no matter what came out. So this is also a birthday fic for her -- of course, her birthday did pass in July, but I tried so hard to get it out on time. Hey, she betaed it herself, so that's something, right?

And in case the Beckett Police come to get me, I was never here, you got that? Because according to Chrissy, the only thing worse than the James Joyce estate is the Beckett Police. No joke. My friend almost had a run in with them -- they'll make it so you wished you never figured out how to hold a pencil. *shudder*

Italics indicates lines taken, respectfully Mr. Beckett, from _Endgame._

Feedback: All comments, criticisms, flames, marriage proposals, and death threats should be sent, with care, to [sparcck@hotmail.com][1].

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_Gravitating towards a taste  
for foreign films and modern plays;  
but that machine can only bend to squares  
five or six times  
before your fingers came unwired._

_-Bend to Squares, Death Cab for Cutie_

**Endgame:**

  * term used to describe an ending in chess where the outcome is already known. Chess masters often study endgames in order to guarantee themselves victory once they maneuver their opponent into a certain position.
  * Play written by Samuel Beckett in 1957 and translated in English in 1958; falls into the category of Theater of the Absurd.

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Once, he was so sure of himself. Once, he was strong, and he believed, and it was the believing that kept the demons at bay.

_The wall! And what do you see on the wall? Mene, mene? Naked bodies?_

While others fought for revenge, he fought for peace. When others lost hope, he retained it.

_I see my light dying._

And he thought that if they could just stay together, he and his comrades, they could save each other, and prevail in the end.

_Your light dying! Listen to that! Well, it can die just as well here, your light. Take a look at me and then come back and tell me what you think of your light._

This was not the way it happened.

_You shouldn't speak to me like that._

He excelled at strategy. He loved putting the pieces in place and watching them play out.

_Forgive me._

There was a term he used to know in his other life, a term that he failed to see translates from the chessboard to life.

_I said, forgive me._

I know that term. I will use it to my advantage. 

_I heard you._

Zero will show me the way. I have built him from nothing, just as I rose from nothing, when the Golden One shoved me deep inside and let me grow misshapen. 

Once, he was me. Five years ago, he decided he no longer loved me, that I was no longer noble enough, so he forgot about me.

But one misstep, and I was able to break free. One tiny life extinguished: that was all it took.

No, he was never fighting for revenge. But I was. 

I am.

I can feel him still, deep inside of me, but I don't even want to spare him a thought, that shining golden soul, because he's so sad I imagine it would break the heart he's always sheltered from me

He's thinking of the tall one, with his eyes like bottom of the ocean. He is begging his forgiveness for what I am about to do.

But it is not he that I pine for.

It is my love, my Zero. My endgame.

"_Can there be misery loftier than mine?_" 

Zero gazes at my solemnly, and his systems power up with nothing more than a glance. The hum of engines and carbines, motors whirring in his metal heart, make my own previously denied heart race. 

"_No doubt. Formerly._" I smile. "_But now?_"

I lean my forehead against Zero's leg, feel my spider's silk blonde hair fall softly across my face to caress his cold metal skin.

"Hello, Zero," I whisper. "There's a whole world that needs destroying."

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"Quatre, this is Trowa. Do you read me Quatre?"

_What is it, my pet? Time for love?_

It's funny what people will believe when they very much want to. "I read you, Trowa. Don't come any closer. Trowa." That name; it is his doing, deep inside of me. I can feel him, trembling with fear at what I may do, and at the same time relishing the taste of the tall boy's name on my tongue.

_Were you asleep?_

He doesn't understand why I am doing this. He doesn't understand the need for revenge. The want of light and life. He has always taken it for granted, the Golden One.

Vayeate flies closer; I imagine I can see the pilot inside, perhaps smiling because his little one has come back to him at last.

_Oh, no!_

But there is no one here but me, and he will learn that I am not one to be so lightly dealt with. He disobeys me, goes against my direct request. Well, then it is no longer a request.

_Kiss me._

"What did I just say?" My voice sounds as tightly strung as a new violin string.

_We can't._

"Don't get any closer!"

_Try._

Zero, now an extension of myself, takes aim at the Vayeate, and the pilot inside. It's a direct hit, as I knew it would be.

I imagine the look of surprise on the tall boy's normally impassive face, and a smile curves my lips upwards.

_[Their heads strain towards each other,]_

The side of the suit rips open in the blast I can see the pilot inside now, so small compared to me.

_[fail to meet,]_

Straining now, he pushes aside a piece of the cockpit that has bent inwards on him. Zero whines in sympathy for the Vayeate, but he knows, as I do, that it had to be done.

The Golden One does not agree. My little prince is enraged, and I become that much stronger.

Because I have been here all the time, feeding off of the scraps of emotion he has left to me. Anger, hate, thirst for violence and death; these things he would believe himself incapable to thinking. 

But he is. Only I will admit it.

_[fall apart again.]_

"Quatre," the tall one says, his voice sounding slightly damaged. "What's going on?"

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They were in bed again, although it was not San Francisco, and Quatre knew, in his rational mind, that then had been the only time they had ever really been together like this. Just that one time, warm under Trowa's body, feeling the other boy's lungs expand with each breath, and although they barely spoke, he felt volumes were exchanged.

This seemed somehow wholly unlike that experience, like Trowa's skin under his cheek was actually plastic or vinyl, and the muscles shifting just under that false skin automated electrical responses. He felt oddly detached. 

"_Why don't you kill me?_"

The quiet question startled the smaller boy out of his reverie. His response was almost without thought, and in some distant corner of his mind, he knew there was something not quite right about it. "_I don't know the combination of the cupboard._"

Trowa, always seemingly unconcerned with such things, gazed calmly at him. "_Go and get two bicycle wheels._"

It was here that Quatre realized, not for the first time or for the last, that things were definitely turned at an odd angle, situations occurring in an incorrect order, if they ever were in any correct order in the first place. But Trowa waited for him to respond, so he did, saying the most logical thing he could. "_There are no more bicycle wheels._"

He didn't know, here, why this made him so sad. He had the tactile memory of rubber and steel in his hands, firm under his flesh, and it made him curl his hands into tight fists, nails carving small half-moons into his palms.

"_What have you done with your bicycle?_"

It never occurred to Quatre to ask Trowa why they were carrying on such an absurd conversation. It made him angry, and that in turn frightened him a little, the strength of his anger.

So why should this anger, followed by this sense of horrible loss, plague him at such a time, when he had the one he needed most next to him, all around him. "_I've never had a bicycle,_" the blonde whispered.

Trowa's face, which Quatre had come to associate with the ghostly impression of passion and tenderness, was now impassive. "_The thing is impossible,_" he said, and Quatre had to strain to hear him, even with his ear next to Trowa's lips.

He rolled over, laying along the line of Trowa's body, and reached up, trying to touch that hard face with a surprisingly steady hand. The taller boy was still, waiting, always waiting.

Quatre knew he was waiting; he, himself, was waiting, had been waiting. And now it seemed the moment was upon them, and he knew in that instant that the look on his former/then lover's face was one of feigned acceptance.

There, in those coldly beautiful features, was a memory that Quatre knew, and he heard the odd echo of a word he had not thought about in a long time, since he played chess with the American.

When was that again?

Endgame, the word was, and Quatre spoke the final words of the scene, just to bring it to a close, as they both knew it would. He couldn't stand for it to carry on any longer.

"_When there were still bicycles, I wept to have one._" His voice was soft, but Trowa flinched almost imperceptibly, his brilliant green eyes going slightly dull. "_I crawled at your feet,_" Quatre continued, "_You told me to go to hell. Now there are none._"

A bead of blood broke the flawlessly smooth skin of Trowa's forehead, rolling down his face slowly, separating into twin rivulets. Two thin streams: one running down and over his sharp cheekbone to pool in the corner of his mouth, the other going a bit crooked, running a parallel line to his right eye and disappearing into the tuft of hair at his temple. 

The boy seemed to smile, and Quatre felt an answering one grotesquely stretch his own lips.

"Trowa."

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"Trowa," I say calmly. "Outer space has gone mad, so I'll destroy it all. I must destroy all the weapons that have accumulated here. The colonies are becoming armed, right? That's why the colonies must also be destroyed."

I am not a monster, even if that is the way I have been treated. I know how to play the game, and I will. He may have one more chance to play out, and then I will crush him.

"What's the matter, Quatre?" Everything is in such high relief; the blood on his face stands out starkly against his pale skin, against the inky black of space. He almost seems to smile; perhaps he, too, remembers a time when we were close, when we were like one. "This isn't like you."

Take your chance, tall one. Take it and go. I am not without mercy. "Tell the others for me. Tell them to stay away. Otherwise, I'll kill them."

Zero signals an incoming and I suddenly want to rip things apart with my bare hands as my twin bucks against my hold. I aim without thought, Zero guiding my hand and my eye.

"I'm telling you not to get any closer!"

We fire as one.

"Is that all you've got to say?" It is the stoic Japanese, the American's lover. 

I pause for a moment, remembering the two of them together, somehow. Remember the happiness that accompanied the thought of the two of them, dark and light. I don't want to remember. They are not my memories to sift through. So I refocus on the boy flying straight for me, stupid boy, getting involved in a game in which he has no place.

I focus on the jealousy my twin had of them sometimes, that jealousy he forced down into me, pretending it didn't hurt to see a relationship he had been denied, all because the one he wanted was unable to express himself.

Never his fault. Certainly not my fault.

He flies at me, pulling the Mercurius' sabre. I let him come, let him disarm me with a blow, and Zero's beam cannon rips from his grasp.

I pull my own sabre. Let him think he can win.

"If everything has gone mad," the Japanese boy says, "then I'll just fight, believing in myself." He pauses, and this is why I know I will win. He still fights for what he believes in, still fights thinking he is in the right. "Quatre," he says, and I smile, knowing through some vague wisp of my golden one's memory the next words, "I'm going to kill you."

Mercurius flies a wide arc around Zero, and I pull back, readying myself. We clash hard, sparks flying, and I am exhilarated, fighting him like this, knowing he always thought me the weak link. Only knowing my golden one's slight resentment of him, which he pushed aside to focus on his admiration. 

There is no admiration here now. Only a sense of getting even; now, now he will be the weak one.

The Mercurius' shields are holding, but they are also strained, and I hear Zero whispering in my ear, telling me to hold out a little longer, just a little longer. I am able to throw him off balance as we come at each other again, and the boy opens his gatling guns.

This is almost too easy, and I show him by deflecting and retaliating in one motion.

Deep inside of me, my twin is quiet. He's wondering where his savior is, and my hands tighten around Zero's controls, thanking him, my savior.

The Japanese boy is strong, but I am stronger, and I see him flagging already. I open my own gatling guns and obliterate the Mercurius' offensive weapons. Again, Zero's gears grind in sympathy, but I have no mercy for a mere pawn in a game. In my game.

The Mercurius' shields now fly at me and I hear the Golden One whisper something pitifully, straining again against the bonds I have placed him in. 

'The best offense is a good defense', he says again, louder, and before me I see an image of the tall boy he supplies readily, his voice like bells in my head. Trowa's elegant chin is cradled in one long, graceful hand, and I want to reach out and touch him.

'Brilliant move', Trowa says and the golden one smiles. 

I scream inside, shoving him back down, and he claws and kicks against me. 

I must stay in control, I tell myself. I must keep my head. This is where I went wrong last time, when I was banished to the darkness the Golden One didn't even know he was hiding. I let my irrational behavior get the better of me.

I dispatch the electric shields with ease, and I let my beam sabre get knocked away. Distract him from the fact that he will lose.

This is my endgame, right Zero? Except we are the only ones to know the outcome.

"The shield won't hold much longer," Heero says, and I only allow myself a moment of displacement that I was able to recall the boy's name.

"Heero," I say, and his name sounds foreign on my tongue, not like the other's name, the beautiful one.

Heero comes at me again, sabre drawn. 

Stupid! Zero fires with hardly a thought from me, tapped in as he is to my mind, my very soul. The blast punches through his pathetic shields and connects, but I stop the blast before it can do real damage. If he wants to play, we play my way, and I will give him one more chance.

"You'll die, Heero. But I don't want to defeat my allies." I close my eyes, and I call up the golden one's voice. "Please, Heero, get away from here. Are you listening to me?"

"Quatre." He pauses, and I think I might have won this way. Then: "I'm not leaving. There's a colony that needs to be defended." And he stands his space, floating between me and my chosen pawn to destroy, ready to lay down his life. 

Such dramatics. I have no time for them.

My eyes still closed, I connect with Zero and we fire without any more warning. Heero's shields are destroyed and the full force of my beam cannon hit the Mercurius, throwing it and its pilot back against the colony he wanted so badly to defend.

I smile tightly and keep up the blast, eventually punching a hole through the colony's exterior wall and the Mercurius crashes through to the outer air duct.

"Heero. I can't stand that colony any longer." This is the truth. I can't stand to see it, to see the proof of mankind's labors, of his wealth, of my loss. I can't stand to see the corruption and the greed, and I feel a burning in my belly, that my twin unwittingly taught me, to set it right.

Heero stands firm, however, and now I know our game has come to a close, and it's time to call checkmate.

I think of his lover, Death, and I believe this is a fitting way to bring the match to a close.

"I'd ask you to get out of your Mobile Suit," I say softly, "but you wouldn't. So I'll just have to kill you."

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It had been almost a month since the American had come back with him to the Maguanac's base. In that whole time, he had only spoken of the Japanese pilot once, and even then, it was only in passing. When Quatre had asked the boy about it, he shook his head and changed the subject.

Quatre supposed they were lovers. Probably not in love, probably didn't even really like one another in the way you're supposed to like someone you're sleeping with; he got the feeling that their tentative relationship was more for comfort, to remind themselves they were alive, and maybe to forget. And he could see passion, too, in Duo's face, could see the opportunity for passion, and he imagined when Heero was inside of Duo he literally was unable to think of war or death, and maybe that was the point.

But Heero was dead, and Quatre couldn't sense anything from the long-haired boy in the way that he was usually able to sense things in people. He found himself wondering where all that passion would go now.

He frowned. Trowa always told him he let himself think too much, let his thoughts get out of his control. 

Well, he amended, he never actually said it out loud, but it was on his face, in a small quirk of his eyebrow.

Had it really been that long ago since he had seen Trowa face to face? It felt like yesterday, and, at the same time, like forever. But in a hotel room in San Francisco, it had been the first time Quatre had truly realized he was in the middle of a war, and it seemed that the only thing keeping him together was the sound of Trowa's breath in his lungs as he pressed closer to that long body.

But now he was alone, with no contact from Trowa. And he couldn't help feeling maybe bit more at peace that Duo was alone, too.

He stared hard at the table in front of him, wondering where on earth that thought had come from. His heart pained him.

"Are you going to move, or what?"

Quatre blinked and focused on the American, who was staring at him owlishly across a red and white marble chessboard. "Sorry," he said softly. 

Duo smiled and patted him on the hand a bit harder than necessary. "No problem. So move."

Quatre studied the board and saw that he could win with one move. He had maneuvered his pieces in such a way to let Duo think he was winning, while setting him up for a crushing defeat. There were more of Duo's pieces, the small army of white fanning across the board, but that was what would make the win all the better.

He was in a position to attack with only a pawn, so simple a strategy, at least in his eyes, he was surprised the other boy hadn't seen it. Still, he let his hand linger over his one remaining knight and he saw Duo twitch slightly out of the corner of his eye.

He glanced at Duo through the fringe of his lashes and saw the frown between his brows, even though his mouth was set in an odd, soft smile.

"Checkmate," Duo said suddenly.

Quatre's eyes flew to his. "What?"

"Checkmate. I know you see it."

Quatre let out a small puff of air. "I do see it."

"So what's that for?" Duo gestured to Quatre's hand, frozen above the knight. "Here." He reached across, grabbed one of Quatre's red pawns and moved it one square. "Checkmate."

Quatre let his hand fall to the table. "Why didn't you let me play out?"

"Because we both knew what was going to happen. Why drag it out like that?"

"It's part of the game, Duo. That's the way you play."

Duo's eyes bordered on dangerous for one moment, as he scrutinized the boy across from him. Quatre started to feel vaguely uncomfortable, when Duo spoke.

"Why?"

Quatre shrugged, collecting the pieces and setting up the board for a new game. "It's just the way I've always played."

"But if we both know how it's going to end--"

"You can choose to continue, if there's a reason to."

Duo looked at him expectantly, his eyes slowly returning to their more normal, though no less odd, shade.

Quatre sighed. "I thought I would give you another chance to win."

Duo smiled slowly. "You would have beaten me anyway."

The smaller boy lifted one shoulder carelessly, but his lips curved into a pleased grin. "Yes. I probably would have."

The other by was quiet a moment, very still, barely breathing. And his eyes flashed, changed one more time, going to black. "_Outside of here it's death,_" he said and grinned.

Startled, Quatre blinked and Duo seemed to flicker out for a second; he had a flash of a vague memory: 

The long-haired boy sitting across a formica table from Trowa, the two engaged in a game of chess that was taking far longer than it should have.

Duo, the tip of his tongue poking into the corner of his lip, his hand hovering between two pieces. Trowa looking on passively, his long, slim hands folded on the table next to a neat row of captured black pieces.

The Chinese pilot was there, his shoulders set rigidly, smacking Duo's hand out of the way and saying something that Quatre couldn't hear, or maybe couldn't remember; the stern-faced boy snatched up one of the black pieces and moved it for him, Duo watching with a slightly amused expression.

Quatre blinked, looked down at the plastic cup clutched in his grip. He frowned. This wasn't right. 

This never happened, he tried to say, but he seemed to be stuck there, standing next to a cracked formica table, florescent lights buzzing overhead.

"Endgame," Trowa suddenly said, and Quatre heard it quite distinctly, even though he couldn't hear anything else over the seemingly deafening hum of the lights. He snapped his head around to look at the taller boy, folded gracefully into his seat.

Trowa stared calmly back at him. 

"_When there were still bicycles I wept to have one. I crawled at your feet. You told me to go to hell. Now there are none,_" Quatre whispered, and suddenly he flew backwards, out of his body, falling through space.

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"I'd ask you to get out of your Mobile Suit," I say softly, "but you wouldn't. So I'll just have to kill you."

"Then get it over with," he grinds out. "I won't sit here and chat with my enemy."

Enemy. I pause for a moment, my heart gripped by something so painful I can barely breathe.

_And yet I hesitate, I hesitate to... to end._

I freeze, and then:

_Yes, there it is, it's time it ended, yet I hesitate to..._

"Sayonara. Heero."

_...to end._

All pain forgotten, my body sings when I clench my hand tight around the trigger and Zero -- my friend, savior, lightbringer -- lets loose with the fury of a thousand hells, brighter than a thousand suns, oh sweet sun, like his eyes...

My golden one wails inside of me, and all the breath rushes from my lungs like ice water.

There is a flash of blue, and the Vayeate flies between Heero and my fury, and suddenly, I feel my grip on my body slip and Quatre, the boy I used to be, the boy who used to be me, rises to the surface.

"Quatre," Trowa says, "why don't you realize what a big mistake you're making?"

Trowa! It is not me that says the boy's name, but it echoes in my skull in my own voice and Zero slides a bit more out of my grasp. 

Things seem to slide by me in a blur, and everything goes silent, more silent than the endless expanse of space, more silent than the prison I have been confined to for all these years. 

But I can hear him, my Golden One, breathing, the tall pilot's name -- Trowa, Trowa -- drifting from his lips; I can hear that pilot, speaking my twin's name, the words themselves unimportant but his tone, calm and gentle, flowing over us like fire through space.

Zero seems to be frozen, and my limbs are unable to move to guide him.

How this happened is incomprehensible. Could I have been so wrong? Was it so wrong to want, to need?

I'm so tired now. I've seen the end, and I have not called it for what it is. Perhaps he knew what was coming all along, playing it out, as he was always wont to do.

Trowa, he tries to say again.

"Quatre," Trowa says and I feel like I can see his face, bloodied and broken, and see his lips moving, but I can only hear that name, his name. 

"Quatre," again, so calm.

My hands move now, slowly. The helmet covering my face is removed, and the air that should have been cool on my skin feels like it's scorching me, burning me away.

Still moving in slow motion, and I hear words that I had forgotten such a long time ago, in a voice that I know is at once mine and his.

"_When I fall I'll weep for happiness._"

"_It's easy going,_" I respond, and everything goes black as my eyes go blind once again.

"Quatre."

There is a white-hot flash of light that imprints itself even on my empty corneas, an explosion that should have been deafening, but here is muffled through miles of cotton.

"Trowa!" 

The small boy's voice rips from my mouth and I taste a trickle of blood as it runs down the back of my throat.

And he's screaming, he's screaming, he won't stop

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"We could work together from now on. Trowa." Quatre moved his head against the other boy, letting his cheek settle in the hollow just below his ribs.

Trowa was silent, his fingers moving through the blonde's silky hair.

"I know it would be different from what you're used to. But we could make it work." Quatre paused again, studying the fine hairs on Trowa's belly. "If we tried, we could. Trowa."

This time, his answer was the bunching of the muscles in Trowa's abdomen as he shifted slightly on the bed, tucking Quatre more firmly against him. He took a breath. 

Quatre waited.

"It would be difficult," the other boy said at last, his voice soft, gentle, his words a counterpoint to the fingers in Quatre's hair. "I don't think you understand what war can do to people."

"I'm trying to understand," Quatre said, a hint of what hovered on the border of confusion and irritation coloring his rich alto. 

"I know."

They lay like that for awhile, Quatre lulled almost to sleep by the steady rise and fall of Trowa's chest, his small fingers stroking the taller boy's hip. "You could show me," he said suddenly.

Trowa's hand froze for a split-second before resuming its careful sifting through Quatre's hair. He didn't say anything.

Quatre sat up, one hand braced on Trowa's hip, the other on the bed. "You could show me what it's like. Help me understand."

Trowa's eyes opened slowly and he studied the boy sitting over him. He tucked his hands behind his head, shifted his gaze to the ceiling. "You don't know what you're asking for."

"I do," the other boy said fiercely. "I do know."

Trowa considered this for a moment, didn't stop staring at the nubby hotel ceiling. "What happens if you had to choose. If you had to choose me or the lives of your comrades. Me or the well-being of the world."

Quatre didn't say anything, just kept looking at Trowa, who kept his eyes trained above him.

"You see," Trowa said gently, "It's not so easy." He paused, and his eyes slid to lock with the smaller boy's. "Is it. Quatre."

Quatre closed his eyes and sank back down next to Trowa, not wanting to see the truth in his eyes. He reached out to smooth a hand over the boy's abdomen.

"Trowa, get back to the tent!"

His eyes flew open and found himself looking into a pair of stormcloud eyes.

"O-okay, sis." The tall boy turned, and headed back the way this woman had come.

"Trowa, wait!" 

"Why can't you people just leave him alone? He doesn't want to go back there. I won't let him." She stood between Quatre and Trowa, hands fisted and braced against slim hips, as though she were restraining herself from violence.

"Trowa..." 

Quatre knew, somehow, that this wasn't right, either. This wasn't what had happened; in fact, knew that it had never happened at all.

All the same, his mouth opened, and he found himself pushing past the young woman, stumbling over his own feet to reach out and grab his former lover before he got away. 

Electricity shot between them. 

Trowa hummed, his eyes going half-lidded. "This isn't what happens."

"_You don't love me,_" Quatre stated, unable to stop himself.

Trowa's eyes went dark. "_No._" 

Quatre faltered, his knees almost giving out. "_You loved me once._"

"_Once,_" Trowa conceeded, inclining his head.

"_I've made you suffer too much. Haven't I?_"

"_It's not that._" 

"_I haven't made you suffer too much?_"

"_Yes!_" The burst from the usually quiet boy startled even Quatre, who had started to feel as though he were standing outside of his body. 

"_Forgive me._" Quatre tightened his hold on Trowa's arm, swung him around to face him and grabbed his other arm, holding him close, burying his head in the taller boy's chest. "_I said, forgive me._" 

They stood like that for what felt like hours to Quatre, who had to struggle to remain upright now, tugging desperately on Trowa's arms. 

And then Trowa broke Quatre's hold, tilted his chin up with one long, pale finger. He placed his other hand on the smaller boy's chest, palm flat over the center of his ribs and his eyes were wide and cat-like, his face soft.

"_I heard you,_" he said, and pushed 

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The feeling of becoming aware of his surroundings again was less like he was coming back into his body in Zero, and more like Zero was slamming into place around him. He felt the pilot's console come up hard and fast under him, felt his teeth rattle in his head as he was thrown forward against the harness.

"Trowa!" he heard someone scream, and realized it was himself.

He didn't understand what was happening. He heard people speaking, felt the vertigo of movement in a mobile suit, but he felt as though he was unused to talking, unused to using his limbs. Even the dim specks of the stars hurt his eyes through Zero's external cameras.

Zero.

Oh, he thought, his mouth opening and closing, his lungs working to bring in more air.

Oh.

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_I say to myself--- sometimes, Clov, you must learn to suffer better than that if you want them to weary of punishing you--- one day. I say to myself--- sometimes, Clov, you must be better than that if you want them to let you go--- one day. But I feel too old, and too far, to form new habits. Good, it'll never end, I'll never go._

Heero fell silent and Quatre had a moment of sheer panic in which he thought he was alone, thought he would go, or had gone, mad.

"Heero?" he tried, his voice scratching along a dried throat. And then again, "Heero!"

His heart clenched and everything slid by him in a haze of red, prolonging the moment when his heart stuttered to a halt.

_Then one day, suddenly, it ends, it changes, I don't understand, it dies, or it's me, I don't understand that either. I ask the words that remain--- sleeping, waking, morning, evening. They have nothing to say._

The quiet of space had never been like it was at that moment, when the blood roared in his ears and his heart clattered against his ribs.

The moment of silence was filled with regret, self-recrimination, sorrow. He realized with finality that it had not been as easy as he thought it would be. 

But his game was over. His waiting was over.

Everything as he knew it ended, but then it changed, and he realized something new was just beginning.

_I open the door of the cell and go. I am so bowed I only see my feet, if I open my eyes, and between my legs a little trail of black dust. I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit._

He gently pulled Heero from the cockpit and lowered them both to the floor. He felt something all around them, something warm and healing. 

The suit was peeled from Heero's upper body and Quatre ran his hands along the boy's collarbones and arms, closing his eyes, feeling life and strength beneath him.

_It's easy going._

He was not as noble as he once thought. He was not an immovable force. He was just a boy. He was just a soldier, like the rest of them. But they were five unique among millions.

Trowa.

Tears collected hot and burning at the edges of his eyelids and he pushed back Heero's hair as he bent his head close to the boy's throat, letting the salty drops splash onto his skin.

_When I fall I'll weep for happiness._

And he cried.

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The End

Hoo Boy. Aerachnae asked if I could draw any pictures to accomany this, and I said unless she wanted little stick figures flying little stick figure mobile suits, she was going to have to look elsewhere. So. If anyone feels so inclined, they can send along any art to me and I would praise thee with pocky and glomps.

[Sparcck][1]

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All original story elements and writing copyright 2000 [Jeanine Schaefer][1]. Please do not distribute this without my permission. If you want to archive it, just let me know. Any other comments or criticisms, same thing. 

**101-ism:** [http://members.nerve.com/sparcck][5]

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   [1]: mailto:sparcck@hotmail.com
   [2]: http://www.gwaddiction.com
   [3]: http://www.steelsong.com
   [4]: http://home.sprintmail.com/~lifeform/Beck_Links.html
   [5]: http://members.nerve.com/sparcck



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